Mises Wire

Two root causes of homelessness — zoning and minimum-wage laws — are warmly and enthusiastically embraced by both the left and the right and ardently opposed by libertarians.

Lehman was a prime example of mainstream consensus analysis of risk and economic opportunity. We "solved" it with more of the same.

If local prices are sending the message that everything's perfectly normal, residents may be overly optimistic about the risks they face during natural disasters.

Scratching beneath the surface of the debate around countercyclical capital buffers, we find the normal level of duplicity that characterizes most debates about monetary policy.

An increasing reliance on military contractors has allowed US policymakers to keep more wars going while using fewer and fewer US troops in combat.

A trip down memory lane will give us a refresher of how gun confiscation has helped consolidate government power.

Racists are often willing to pay higher prices for the psychic profit of living in certain neighborhoods. J. Dallas Bowser was happy to take their money.

New York Fed Chief Dudley recently suggested asset bubbles "emerge from the way market participant’s process information and trade" — thus ignoring the role of the central bank.

Proponents claim that if the government just "cracks down" even harder, the drug problem will be solved. The reality in Mexico and the Philippines shows how wrong this idea is.

In the early years of the United States, legal systems were far more localized and flexible. But elites preferred consistency over flexibility, and the rich could afford the more bureaucratic legal institutions that ordinary people could not.